AuthorTopic: International STUFF (Read 385 times)

This isn't political in any way, so I'm not sure why I'm posting it in this section, but am often confused as to international copyright. Things like opening a movie in one country before another. And then they wonder how the latest torrent got out so fast. I'm not sure it would make a difference really, but if they just give everyone access at the same time..wouldn't that work? Same thing with Youtube. Why is something not available in my location? It just sends somebody somewhere else to find it..even if they have to steal it. I mean, let's face it...most people don't think torrenting is stealing. The other thing is online sales. A number of times I've seen something on sale on Amazon that says "does not ship to your country" is unreal. I can order anything I want FOR FREE SHIPPING from China...but not from my closest neighbour(USA). Anywho...the reason I'm typing now is that I was just on Musician's Friend looking at their Deal of The Day. Right away it said, does not ship to your location. There was a button that said: see what countries we ship to). I clicked it, and this is what it said:

I know. It's an archaic thing that doesn't make sense in this day and age. What's the point in protecting regional markets when everything is digital now and everyone everywhere wants to see something the same day it comes out.

Here in New Zealand, our only pay tv network (SKY TV) recently kicked up a fuss because people were using VPN services like Hola and 'global mode' to access the US version of Netflix, compared to the NZ version of Netflix which only has a fraction of the content on the US store. I feel it's the last dying gasp of these old tv networks to hang on to their distribution agreements which mean nothing to the average person simply wanting to watch an episode of their favourite show and keep up with the social media buzz around those episodes.

Same goes for movies. It is a real pain looking for region-free versions of movies that seem to be primarily distributed in one region only. I'm a huge fan of 3D movies on blu ray for example, and I have to trawl through Ebay to track down very rare 3D releases that have-and-never-will-be-released-in-NZ, and Amazon typically only has the American releases only (Region A). New Zealand is Region B for blu ray.

It's frustrating. Why should we Kiwis be penalised and miss out on some great movies with cult appeal? If they actually got their heads together, they would actually profit immeasurably more if they opened up all their physical media to all regions.